


That Which We Are

by asongstress1422



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Universe, Death, F/M, Internal Conflict, Monster - Freeform, Season/Series 02, coming to terms, fight, hide - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 14:45:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8582464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asongstress1422/pseuds/asongstress1422
Summary: What Bellamy knows about Clarke would surprise you. Or maybe not. How could one not look in her eyes, see that feral glint, and not know what lurked beneath.The real reason he let her go in the end. (season 2)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is. Just wanted to post something this week.

Most wouldn’t know this about Clarke Griffin, but there was something bestial that lurked within her, something just as ruthless and bloodthirsty as which resided in Bellamy.

It was the reason he took the lead in so many of the conflicts they had come against, because his beast would cut down opponents; hers would destroy. Her animal was cold, calculating and would lay waste to whatever and whoever stood in her way be it friend, enemy, or lover. He often scared himself with the fierce ferocity in which he handled a situation. But that fear was nothing to the terror that consumed him when she felt the need to take over.  

He had learned to live with the primal rage at a young age, had given it the outlet of protecting Octavia the sister he was never supposed to have. It gave him a focus, a drive, that guided his instincts and honed them in a way he could use.

Clarke had been taught to ignore it, to pretend the darker part of herself didn’t exist. She built it a cage of logic and skill and muted emotion and never let it out.

That cage had been badly rattled with the sentencing and death of her father. The only thing that had kept her sane had been her time in solitary confinement and a lifelong belief in the law. It gave her the time needed to reset the bolts and weld the broken joints back into place. The scariest part was that she had ignored that part of her so long she hadn’t even known that that was what she had been doing, alone in a cell with her charcoal and art.

The welds, new as they were, held under the impact of being sent to the earth but just barely. The beast was awake now and restless; danger a scent it knew and the ground was not a safe place

The knowledge of her mother’s betrayal destroyed the very semblance of the safety she created for herself. He often thought that if she haddn’t lost Wells right after, she would have been fine, the beast content to stay in the only place it knew even if now there were not actual walls to keep it in. Instead the murder of her friend, the last piece of her old life being ripped away, gave her the taste for vengeance.

Bellamy heard her beasts roar as it went for Murphy’s throat, her need to strike out becoming its need. And as Clarke cut him down after learning of the boys innocents he watched the girl trembling as she came face to face with what her mind and body truly constrained.

Once freed, it refused to be put back in the small confines that it had been designated all their life. So instead she wrapped thick chains around it of rule and law.

He watched as it tested those chains range at the torture of the grounder as the woman Clarke gave her imperious nod. As she knelt before them all and begged for them not to let her become what she was.   

And after when she began to see that rule and law were not created by good people, but by the victors of the long fought battles, battles that her beast recognised well.

He had no way of knowing when that final transition would take place, when those final tethers would meld into what she was, and what difference it would mean for her.

It didn’t happen that first incident with the grounder. He hadn't been there to see the aftermath of its second taste of freedom. But he heard the stories later, how she had returned alone, looked at the fearful faces before her and close the door behind her.

He would also learn through the stories how she stopped being afraid of what was inside her, the part of her that would fight bloody and dirty to win. How she stood before two leaders and roared back at their demands. How she fled when no other would, her beast knowing their sanctuary was not true safety, that protection was not free, and jumped a hundred feet to freedom.

How she fought for every step along side a native-beast, a woman bread for life on the ground _by_ life on the ground. Saw herself in another for the first time if she had been free to be what she was; wild strength and cunning.

How she fought her to the ground and came out the dominant with a shared goal. Only to see her shot before her. To see the beast killed and know that her’s was hunted also. That that fierce bloody woman, bleeding into the ground, could be her.

So she hid the beast; killed the compassion, hid the protective instinct, and left the cold human that had seen too much blood solely in charge.

It wasn’t the beast that killed the boy with a knife to the heart. It wasn’t something so emotional as that. It was her human side, the side that held logic paramount. She thought she was helping, locking away the beast and using only what she knew before she landed that the group must overcome. She turned around and all they saw was a monster.

Then over the fire, no choices left. He saw her embrace what she was because there was no other options. The beast turned to his and said ‘go die for me’ before she knew the words.

He thought it had happened in the Mountain, had saw that last shred of humanity shrink around her as she prepared to pull the lever alone. He had set his beast out to temper that, giving it the scent of Octavia’s danger to guide it as he watched to see if his sacrifice would pan out and keep at least one lead attached.

It had. Better than he expected.

She had left, needing the quiet and loneliness to begin the process of re-chaining the beast, now understanding that that was all that kept it quiet when her father had been sacrificed. Knowing if she stayed she would destroy all that she saw in her rage.  

So he let her go with a gun in her hand and the taste of death fresh on her lips. Knowing that his beast was no longer enough to keep her’s tame. She had to learn to live with it on her own or let it destroy her silently; alone where she could at least die with the last of her humanity.

* * *

 Time moved on and nothing changed.

Bellamy took to scanning the horizon when he went out hunting, searching for a shock of bloody blond hair tangled at the base of a tree. Every time a scout group came in he waited for the news that they had found her body. For four months he waited knowing one day the news would come and his beast would stop wondering about its mate.

When Idra stepped out of the woods with Kane and told him she was alive he didn’t really believe her. Didn’t think the girl he knew was strong enough to overcome her human convictions and live through it.

Oh how wrong he had been.

**Author's Note:**

> Commits, edits, critiques greatly wanted.


End file.
